Various medications are prescribed to combat illnesses and ailments. The use of prescribed medication, usually provided in pill form, has increased as medical science has progressed. Likewise, advancements in medical science have increased the selection, application and potency of prescription medications. Moreover, various diseases, conditions and illnesses that once required or allowed a patient to opt for hospitalization are now commonly treated on an out-patient basis through a prescribed medication regimen.
For the above reasons and more, many medications including many drugs in pill form are now regularly self-administered under little to no supervision. Self-administration of medication increases the possibility that a patient will fail to comply with directions regarding such things as dosage and timing. Non-compliance can greatly diminish the effectiveness of the treatment as well as increase the likelihood of harm to the patient, neither of which are desirable. Further, non-compliance can increase healthcare costs and consume healthcare resources that could be allocated elsewhere but for the non-compliance.
Even when unsupervised by medical professionals, patients must follow their treatment regimens when travelling or at home, just as students must do their homework outside of school. However, even motivated pupils will lose engagement and show poor compliance with their homework regimen when there is a failure to review or correct the pupils' homework. Similarly, outside the medical setting, patients are largely unmonitored and research confirms that they lose interest in their treatment regimens. This “lack of engagement” can be mitigated by the invention described herein which is designed to facilitate patient monitoring and patient feedback assessment. Of particular benefit, the invention creates a “Hawthorne effect”—inducing the patient to follow treatment more carefully.
It is estimated that less than 50% of written prescriptions are taken as prescribed. This non-compliance results in the non-desirable effects of greatly diminishing the effectiveness of the treatment and increasing the likelihood of harm to the patient. Furthermore, the patient's non-compliance can result in increases in healthcare costs and in the consumption of healthcare resources that could be allocated elsewhere but for the non-compliance. A co-related problem is that during doctor visits, the patient may not be able to accurately relay medical information because the patient's previous behaviors, symptoms, and side-effects are vague memories.
Abuse such as recreational use or unauthorized distribution is always a societal concern. Often abuse is interrelated to dependency. The risk of dependency is of particular concern when the prescribed medication is known to be habit-forming or outright addictive. Although the risk of dependency is particularly acute when the patient is known to be high-risk (i.e. susceptible to abuse and addiction), dependency remains a risk with all patients.
Thus, the risks associated with non-compliance are a real concern for doctors, pharmacists and manufacturers, among others. As a result, doctors often under-prescribe certain medications, thereby, lessening the benefits of the medication. Doctors and other healthcare professionals are also forced to make dependency risk determinations about their patients, which can put the patient and the doctor in an uncomfortable, possibly, compromising situation.
The patient's non-compliance with a prescribed medication regimen may result in underdosing, overdosing, medication abuse and dependency, all of which typically affect a patient's overall health and, in many cases, can be life-threatening.
Overdosing may result from the patient's unsound attempts to increase the therapeutic effectiveness of the medication, to cause self-inflicted harm, or to abuse or depend on medication. Overuse of certain medications, such as painkillers, has become a major societal concern. Healthcare professionals have no acceptable tools to detect abuse patterns, to deter misuse, to limit diversion, or to optimize patient education for at-risk patients. As a result, doctors often under-prescribe abusable medications, thereby lessening the benefits of the medication. On the other hand, underdosing may result if the patient seeks to lower their prescription costs or to limit the prescription's side effects.
Underdosing and overdosing often occur by simple mistake or neglect, particularly when the patient is required to self-administer a complex regimen of medications. In order for a medical professional to respond with corrective action or change the treatment regimen, it would be beneficial for the medical professional to be made aware of the patient's deviation from the prescribed usage.
In an embodiment, the invention described herein provides a solution to the dilemma described above. This enables the gathering of useful information from a remote party, for example a patient, at an affordable cost. Moreover, this enables that information to be gathered from a device in a manner that virtually assures its accuracy. And this also enables that the verifiable dissemination of information to the device even though the device user may be unreliable.
In an embodiment, the invention enables the automatic and regular assessment of patients to create a useful data trail of symptoms, side-effects, and activity levels. This enables the approximate monitoring of a patient's medication usage pattern which is indicative of whether a patient is overusing or underusing medication. This also enables the deterring of unauthorized access to medication. Also, this enables the gathering of useful subjective information about a patient at an affordable cost.
In an embodiment, this invention enables the data gathered, both objective and subjective, to be combined into actionable reports for use by healthcare professionals to make better treatment decisions. This enables a doctor to assess whether or not there is an apparent pattern of progress and to determine whether a therapy is not working because of a drug or because of the patient's non-compliance. This enables reports that can help the doctor in determining these issues or allow a care team to make an evidence-based decision on whether to proceed with a drug therapy, or whether to change the drug.
Moreover, in an embodiment, this invention enables intervention in an automatic or semi-automatic manner, allowing the automatic (a) curtailing medication access when overuse is noted, (b) instigating reminders when underuse is detected, and (c) communicating educational messages at relevant moments, based on the subjective and objective data being gathered from the patient.
The invention described herein was conceived for use in a healthcare setting. But it has applicability in other settings, such as the monitoring of weapons, devices with dangerous qualities, or the monitoring of devices controlled by users prone to undesirable behavior or error.